The Soyuz with a Fregat upper stage was carrying its prime payload, environmental and weather satellite Meteor M2-1, and 18 smaller satellites. It launched this morning from Vostochny, the second Soyuz to launch there. However, communications with the satellite could not be established and it is currently unclear whether it was placed in a wrong orbit or crashed. Primary suspect for the failure currently is the Fregat upper stage.

The official Russian media then reported that one of the first two firings of the Fregat upper stage had not taken place as planned, possibly leaving the stack in a wrong orbit. There was also early confirmation that the Fregat did begin its first firing, but it was unclear whether it had been concluded as planned.

In the early afternoon Moscow Time, the Interfax news agency reported that preliminary data had indicated that a human error in the pre-programmed flight sequence could have placed the Fregat upper stage into wrong orientation during its first maneuver, sending the space tug and its payloads into the Atlantic Ocean.

Scrap that "sabotage" hypothesis. Manned Soyuz is basically the same design as inherited by Russia from Korolev and USSR. They are designed to survive any stupidity an incompetent operator throws at them. Extra quality control helps too, and the design is robust enough to cope with run-of-the-mill issues. The fact that there are only four of them annually, allows quality control to be thorough enough to make a difference.Now these "extra stages" like Fregat are designed in the same era of underfunding and mismanagement, and manufactured by the same underpaid and undertrained workforce, that's dropping Phobos-Grunt into the ocean, leaving caps and waste in fuel tanks, etc. Without extra oversight -- all the hell breaks loose.